The Little Snow Girl in Iceland
by jesumine kyd
Summary: It can be awful lonely being only one of several of your kind who must hide from an entire nation of people. And when you, yourself, are considered an outsider of the five you know ... it can be lonely. Terribly lonely.
1. huldufolk

Forleikur

"_No warm blood in me doth glow,  
__Water in my veins doth flow;  
__Yet I'll laugh and sing and play  
__By frosty night and frosty day–  
__Little daughter of the Snow._

"_But whenever I do know  
__That you love me little, then  
__I shall melt away again.  
__Back into the sky I'll go–  
__Little daughter of the Snow."_

- An extract from _Little Daughter of the Snow_ by Arthur Ransome.

* * *

Aftur

The Christian Rus slavs where found belowdecks. They huddled close to each other for warmth but also out of fear, their eyes were white and they kept murmuring words sounding like "Snegurochka" and "Baba Yaga."

Some were hung as sacrifices to Óðinn, the others were slaughtered. Obviously they had revolted, murdering their captors. Justice came swiftly with sword and ax, though some said it was a shame to waste such cargo. There were some fine men and boys for working the fields and some good girls for breeding.

But it was not to be helped. If they were to be let to live, who knows what trouble they would have stirred up if they were to see weakness, rise up and revolt again, killing how many more?

Not one was left alive.

There was talk of a flash of light leaving the ship as it guided itself to port, the rudderman tied fast to the helm, the captain gutted atop the mainmast. Some said it was a sign from Þórr, but was the sign an omen, and if an omen did it tide well or ill?

None could tell, although there was some serious talk of it ashore, and some called the talkers fools, practicing seiðr, always looking for signs and portents, when, in fact, there were none: just the earth, the sea, the sky, and the cold.

It wasn't always cold in Iceland, aptly named, but when it was cold, it was cold, regardless of the clothes. And when it got dark in Iceland, it got dark, and it stayed dark, depending on the season, for days.

And some said there were things in the dark. Huldufólk and álfarnir, always hiding, always causing mischief. It was said they were never seen. It was said if you saw one, you died.

Nobody laughed at those tales. Everyone had a wife, or an uncle, a brother, a daughter, or a friend who went out one day to the fields, and went out to the rocks because they saw something.

And never came back.

Or they went out, and things were ... not as they were. Food was disturbed, but not eaten, as an animal would have. Clothes were folded, or arranged fancifully. A helm was crushed once. Crushed. And not by a rock. There were imprints of fingers on the helm, crushing it like ...

Crushing it like an álfur had grabbed it, played with it, like a ball, and then cast it aside as useless.

One person had seen an álfur and lived. One. They said he was mad. He talked about it to anyone who would hear, or, when he got (too) drunk, to anyone who wouldn't. He said he saw a woman, a beautiful woman, but she wasn't. Her eyes were red as blood, and when she smiled at him, his blood ran cold. She walked right up to him from afar, and touched him.

Her hand was chiseled ice.

Then she smiled and said, "You're funny." She laughed, and it was lilting, a bubbling laugh that wasn't funny, it was unearthly, and she became the wind, and disappeared.

Gunnar was his name. Mad Gunnar.

He was always going back to the hills, always looking for that fae girl.

One day, he didn't come back. No trace of him was ever found.

There were only so many people on Iceland. The huldufólk were the huldufólk, and men were men, and the twain should never meet.

Some argued that the flash at sea on the slav-ship was an álfur, but that was laughed off. The huldufólk were in the hills and mountains. After all: they hid. How could one hide on the open ocean?

But there were those nagging comments from the Rus of the fiercesome, angry child "Baba Yaga" of long, flowing hair and red, red eyes, eyes as red as blood.

And what had happened to the rest of the crew? Why were the Rus unharmed, but not a single Norse man survived?

Were the Æsir angry with the Islanders?

Years passed, and these stories were forgotten. Or they were told to children, not yet of age, to scare them into staying in the villages and towns.

Don't wander off, children. Don't wander off, or the huldufólk will find you, and then were will you be, crying for mommy, who cannot hear you now, you being so far afield?

Or where will you be without your left sock, then, walking all the way back home across the cold earth, your little toe freezing off, as happened to little Magnús. He thought it was so funny, the tales, until one day he washed himself in the river, alone, and he reemerged, and lo, his left sock was gone. Just his left sock.

He called out, but nobody was there.

Nobody.

Walking home, his little toe turned black, and it eventually had to be cut off to save his foot.

The huldufólk are real, children. Don't look for them. Don't laugh at the tales.

* * *

Eftirmáli

_Seven hundred years later, _Icelanders still believe in the huldufólk.

Seven hundred years after the little girl of long, flowing hair dived away from the ship bearing her from the Rus land is when this tale begins.

Seven hundred years. The loneliness, hiding in the hills, ... it could drive one to do things. Things one normally wouldn't contemplate otherwise.

But it had been a long, long time.

And this little girl was lonely.

And curious.

And she had such a lovely, lilting laugh.


	2. plainfolk

**Chapter summary:** It can be awful lonely being only one of several of your kind who must hide from an entire nation of people. And when you, yourself, are considered an outsider of the five you know ... it can be lonely. Terribly lonely.

* * *

_Twelve-hundred years later_

The plainfólk were always so funny to watch, so impoverished in spirit and in gifts, so slow, so ... plain.

Just so plain, going about their mundane lives, ... being children, having children, then being old and dying.

What was funny to me was they went about their lives with such purposefulness, as if their lives had any meaning. They did their work and their play seriously, as if this were the only time that they would work, and play, and sleep, and eat, and breathe, and live, and die.

And, for them, it was. They were not huldufólk. They did not see seasons come and go like the tide, like the sun, the moon and the stars.

I wondered if I would see the sun go, as some had seen stars come and go.

Some of us were very, very old. Older than me.

I am nine. I have been nine for a long, long time. Before I was nine, ... I don't remember. I don't know even if I'm nine. Some say I'm nine, so I'm nine.

Some huldufólk say so, that is, not plainfólk. You are not to talk with the plainfólk for some reason; you could play tricks on them, you could kill them, you could eat them when they were lost and alone and you were hungry. A quick, clean kill: no one would see but you and them, and they would be dead, sometimes even before they knew it.

I used to kill plainfólk, a long, long time ago.

But ...

I grew tired of it. They were very good on the mouth and down the throat, their blood, _so good,_ but ...

But they were so funny, and so sad, and so much like a day-candle left out on a windy day, snuffed out before illumining anything, and I thought it so dull to kill them even before they played and grew and loved and died.

It just didn't seem fun. It wasn't a challenge to kill them; it was a challenge to let them live, and to watch them.

They're so silly, after all.

But just watch them.

Only watch them.

Never, never talk to them.

Just talking to one, and it died. Just like that. I put my hand on his chest, and felt his fluttery little heart, and said, 'You're funny.'

That's all I said.

And he died.

And that was sad, even though I laughed and laughed at that moment. I mean, it was so funny, his eyes just rolling up into his head, and his little heart bursting, just like that.

So funny, and so sad.

I learned something that day. The plainfólk are like birds, like a little, tiny bird cupped in your hand, so seemingly big and strong and imposing, so full of blood, but ...

Just touch them, and their hearts burst.

Silly little birds.

...

I had been watching them. There was a village. It was nothing, really, just a few houses close to each other, but so much more than what we ever have.

We have nothing. We need nothing.

There was a boy and a girl, and I watched them as little children, then as boyfriend and girlfriend, and when they first, shyly, held hands, I laughed and laughed and laughed at them. Not so they saw me or heard me, of course; but, o! how I laughed!

They were so silly, and so sweet!

And then they left their parents, and had their own house, and grew old together.

It was so nice, seeing them as childhood friends, then, as lovers, then, as friends, dear, old friends together.

But they were sad. They were old, and they had no children, and they had no grandchildren.

And they would hold hands, still, sometimes, as old friends, and they would watch the young children playing, and they would be smiling.

But their smiles were not happy, they were wistful smiles.

For the plainfólk, they lived and they died, and their happiness was in their children, and their children's children. They somehow saw themselves continuing on through their young ones, the children's youth giving the old ones happiness, purpose and meaning.

But if you plainfólk, and you had no children ...

Then, what was the point?

I saw the old couple, the man and the woman, and I was sad for them. Why could they not just be, like the huldufólk, not be forever, not stay and be untouched, but be, and grow old, and die, and just be happy with that? Why could they not just watch the children playing and be happy with that. I was. Why could they not be so?

I was sad for them, the silly, old plainfólk, they had been happy together in their youth, they were happy with each other in their agedness, why was that not enough for them?

But it wasn't, and they wouldn't admit that to each other, and that made them sadder, and quieter.

They would die soon: this year, next year ... sometime. It was their way. I saw it in their stance. I saw it in their eyes. They would die, and that would be it.

...

"But why do they die, Jón?" I asked.

Jón was my age, a little older, and did he love to lord that over me. He was only a couple of centuries old, but since he was forever fifteen, I was always the stupid, little Rus-girl, and he was filled with wisdom and self-importance.

He could be so mean to me sometimes.

Not just me, for he was fill with cruelty. The huldufólk did as they pleased, and some, most, delighted in tormenting the plainfólk, capturing one separated from its kith and then seeing how long it lasted or how loudly or how long or how sweetly it could scream before it died. It passed the time, and time was all we had.

Some like playing games with the plainfólk, that's what they were there for, and some of the games were cruel.

Jón just shrugged. "It is their way," he said.

Sometimes the other huldufólk and I played games with each other, we would play ball or hide and seek or have footraces or swim in the sea or catch me if you can, and I had such fun when I had playmates. Even the older ones, the really older ones, in their twenties and thirties ... one was even in his forties, _so old!_ ... when they became álfur, would even play, to pass the time.

But none wanted to play with me for as long as I liked, they always grew bored of my childish games, and that hurt me, inside, although I never let it show. I was not plainfólk, obviously, but I was not huldufólk. Not really. I had come from Russia, a long, long time ago, and I had my silly eating habits that were looked upon with wry humor or shocked mortification — _"You eat __that__?"_ they would gasp and gag, and no explanation of mine would suffice — I was just an oddity to the huldufólk, and there weren't many of us on Ísland. Five I had seen. Maybe there were ten of us, total. And being an outcast of a race of ten?

I was alone, and sometimes I was even lonely, and what hurt was, I was just a little girl, and I had no one to turn to in my sorrow. I had no one to love, nor to love me.

And that hurt, when I felt that keenly.

And there was that old couple. They were plainfólk, yes, but ...

I had watched them their whole lives, but they had never, _ever_ seen me. They were good people, kind and caring, and they would die soon.

I felt sad that I had known everything about their lives, their simple-plainfólk joys and sorrows, that I had actually been a part of their lives, their whole lives, but they knew nothing of me and mine.

Could they love me?

I smiled, watching them, but it wasn't a happy smile. It was wistful.

I realized my smile was just like theirs.

And that was funny, in a way.

And I knew what to do.

But how to do it?


End file.
